Beijing City

King Wu was the first to declare Beijing the capital city in 1057 BC. Subsequently, the city has gone by the names of Ji, Zhongdu, Dadu, and finally Beijing when the Ming Dynasty Emperor ChengZu chose the name in 1421. Before 1949, Beijing was known as Peking by the Western world. After 1949, the city's name returned to Beijing, as it is known today.

Beijing City is an independently administered municipal district. She is situated in the northeastern part of China at an elevation of 43.5m above sea level. The climate in Beijing is of the continental type, with cold and dry winters and hot summers. January is the coldest month (-4 Celsius), while July the warmest (26 Celsius).

Beijing has a whole area of 16808 sq km (about 6500 sq mi), stretching 160 kilometres from east to west and over 180 kilometres north to south. She has 18 districts and counties with Dongcheng, Xicheng, Xuanwu, Chongwen, Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai and Shijingshan in the surburbs and Fangshan, Mengtougou, Changping, Tongxian, Shunyi, Daxing, Huairou, Miyun, Pinggu and Yianqing in the outer suburbs. Population in Beijing is about 12 million (2008).

From: http://www.beijingpage.com/

The Great Wall

The Great Wall stretches for 4,160 miles across North China. It is the only man-made structure that can be seen from the moon with the naked eye. Its construction started as far back as the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 B.c.) and the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.). Rival feudal kingdoms built walls around their territories to keep out invading nomadic tribes from the north.

When Qin Shihuang unified China, he started to link up and extend these walls. Prisoners of war, convicts, soldiers, civilians and farmers provided the labor. Millions died for this cause and many Chinese stories speak of parted lovers and men dying of starvation and disease. Their bodies were buried in the foundations of the wall or used to make up its thickness.

The Great Wall crosses loess plateaus, mountains, deserts, rivers and valleys, passing through five provinces and two autonomous regions. It is about 20 feet wide and 26 feet high. Parts of the wall are so broad that 10 soldiers can walk abreast. Materials used were whatever could be found near by-clay, stone, willow branches, reeds and sand. Parts of this wall can still be seen in remote parts of China. What most visitors see of the Wall now was restored in the Ming dynasty, when stone slabs replaced clay bricks. It took 100 years to rebuild and it is said that the amount of material used in the present wall alone is enough to circle the world at the equator five times.

From: http://www.educ.uvic.ca/